Black & White

by Dani Shapiro

  Two guards stand in the wide arch between the two rooms, guarding against—what? Bombs? Art thieves? What about Clara’s Angels? Do they still exist, or have they grown old and retired? Maybe they’ve moved to the suburbs. As far as Clara knows, it’s been a long time since anyone has thrown a bucket of paint at a photograph of Ruth’s.

  “Mom? Hello?”

  Sam is looking at her strangely.

  “What, darling?”

  “You’re talking to yourself.”

  Snap out of it, Clara. She has forgotten—for a long dreamlike moment, the glimpse of the photographs has made her forget—her purpose in being here. How long has she been standing frozen in the middle of the room?

  “Come with me.”

  She pulls Sammy over to the photographs. Quickly, quickly. Moving next to Jonathan. Their tight little family huddled together in front of the huge prints.

  “Excuse me,” she says to the art student, who is standing too close.

  She moves slightly to the side, and Sammy looks up at the first photograph, then the second, and then the third, moving across them as if they are movie stills. As if they might tell a single story.

  “What are these?” Sam asks, the words becoming rhetorical even as they form and hang in the air. Clara watches her carefully. She watches as the images sink in.

  “Who am I looking at?” Sam asks again.

  Evocative. Clara looks at the first photograph. Unforgiving. Her mother’s highest praise. And then, that terribly shaky voice: Don’t you know who I am?

  “Who is that?” Sam’s voice rises above a whisper in the quiet of the gallery. Too loud. The art student moves away from them, focusing now on the Warhol.

  Clara bites her lip to keep from speaking. She wants Sammy to come to it on her own. And besides, Clara doesn’t trust the way her own voice might come out: strangled, the tendons in her neck tight with tension.

  Jonathan puts his arm around her, creating a shelter. Clara with the Lizard is the first of the three photographs, which are hung close together, almost like a triptych. In the middle is Clara in the Fountain. And finally—as if some curator’s idea of creating a narrative—Naked at Fourteen.

  Sam stares for a long moment at the middle photograph, the one Clara would say, if asked, is the most bearable. She is naked, yes—she can still feel the cold water of the fountain, the pennies beneath her bare feet—but Clara in the Fountain is one of Ruth’s few photographs that doesn’t make her feel ill.

  Sammy takes a few tentative steps over to where the plaque is affixed to the wall. Clara moves over to Sammy—she can’t stand to have her more than arm’s distance away—and reads along with her.

  RUTH DUNNE (1947–)

  The blank space after the date of her mother’s birth begins to break apart, become pixilated until a date of death begins to form.

  “So in the pictures, that’s—that’s—”

  “Your mother,” says Jonathan, his voice choked up.

  “What do you want to know, Sam?” Clara asks. “You can ask me—you can ask me anything.” She gives herself over to an unfamiliar feeling. What is it, resignation? Relief? The muscles in her body—the tightness in her neck, her legs tensed as if ready to jump—all of it just melts away. Suddenly, she’s exhausted. She could curl up right here, on the stone floor of the museum, and go to sleep.

  The art student is now looking at them with intense interest, focusing first on Sammy, then on the photographs, then back at Sammy. A glimmer of confused recognition.

  Sammy looks closely at Clara in the Fountain. She seems almost to be ignoring the others. Of course, Clara realizes: In that photograph she’s almost exactly Sam’s age.

  “What are you doing? Where are you?”

  “In the fountain at the Apthorp,” Clara says. “In the middle of the night.”

  “Why are you naked?”

  “I was always naked.”

  “In all the pictures?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Sam nods slightly—almost as if Clara has confirmed something she had already begun to suspect. Then she turns her attention to Clara with the Lizard.

  “How about that one?”

  “That was the first picture,” Clara says. “The first ever.”

  The chemical taste of rubber fills her mouth. Her skin feels damp.

  “How old were you?”

  “Three.”

  “And that one?”

  Sam points to Naked at Fourteen.

  “That—well, that was the last.”

  “Why? Why was it the last?”

  The questions are rapid-fire. For a moment, Clara can’t find her voice. There are so many answers to choose from. Because it never should have happened. Because I wanted to die. Because I should have found a way to stop it the year before, or the year before that, or the year before that.

  “Because it had to be,” Clara finally says.

  Sam nods again. That knowing look in her eye. Was all this somehow inside of her already, this knowledge? She looks once again at the photographs, as if committing them to memory.

  Then she turns to Clara and Jonathan.

  “That’s cool, Mom—you’re in a museum. So now can we go to the café?”

  RUTH and Nathan Dunne did most of their fighting outside of the house. From the time the girls were born, Ruth and Nathan agreed that their children shouldn’t be exposed to their arguments, which, though rare, could spiral into a place full of scalding rage. And so, with a few notable exceptions, they went out. To restaurants, to bars, to park benches where they sat, warming their hands around Styrofoam coffee cups while they tried—two fragile creatures trembling with anger—to make themselves understood to each other.

  But not on this particular night. On this particular night—Clara is on the cusp of her eleventh birthday—the shouting starts only moments after Nathan returns from the office. Something, it seems, has happened. Clara doesn’t know what, and she sees on her mother’s face that Ruth doesn’t know either. But Nathan’s thin face is pale with fury, his lips dark red against the whiteness, as he sets his briefcase down by the front door.

  He grabs Ruth by the arm and pulls her into the kitchen.

  “We need to talk.”

  “Not now, Nate. The girls—”

  “The girls! Don’t you dare use the girls as an excuse!”

  “What are you—”

  Clara tries to follow them into the kitchen, but they’ve already moved on. Nathan has dragged Ruth through the kitchen, out the other side, and into her studio, closing the door firmly behind them.

  “What’s going on?”

  Robin has emerged from her bedroom. A Walkman dangles around her neck like a piece of tribal jewelry, and an algebra book is tucked under her arm.

  “I don’t know.”

  Robin scratches her head. Her expression is blank. She has just become a teenager and has instantly developed a teenager’s feigned boredom in all situations.

  “I’ll bet I know,” she says.

  “What?”

  Clara can hear her father’s shouts, even through the layers and layers of soundproofing. He must be yelling really loud.

  “Dad came home during the day today. I had just gotten back from school.”

  “Yeah? So what?”

  “So he went into the studio.”

  Clara starts to feel a little nauseated. Like suddenly she might throw up.

  “Was Mom there?” she asks. “Was Mom in the studio?”

  “No. She had a doctor’s appointment.”

  Now, the sound of a crash—something actually being knocked over and broken. Even at his angriest, Clara has never seen her father be physically destructive. It just isn’t like him. Maybe it’s Ruth. Ruth is more capable of breaking things.

  Robin stretches her arms overhead and moves them from side to side as if she’s in a calisthenics class. Her T-shirt pulls out of her jeans, exposing a wide swath of belly. She lets out a yawn and then turns and starts heading bac
k to her room.

  “Where are you going?” Clara asks.

  “I have to study.” Robin waves her algebra book in the air.

  “But—”

  “Oh, come on, Clara. What am I supposed to do, stand here like an idiot and listen to this?”

  Robin shakes her head in disgust. Suddenly, she looks a lot older than thirteen. For a strange brief second, the veil separating the present and the future rises, and Clara can see her sister as the grown-up she will someday be. The tight little face, bunched up with worry. The business suit and briefcase, just like Nathan’s. The padlocked eyes that let no one in.

  “I mean,” Robin tosses over her shoulder as she walks away, “it’s not like it has anything to do with me.”

  Clara starts to speak, but no words come out. She has nothing to say, and she knows better than to say something stupid. Deep down, she is certain that there can be only one reason for her parents fighting in the studio. It’s her, of course. The shattering crash on the other side of the wall, the awful sound of her father’s shouts—it’s all about Clara. Only Clara.

  Alone now, she sinks to the floor and leans her head against the wall. She can hear the pitch and tone of her parents shouting but can’t make out a word. She looks around the living room, gray shadows falling over the furniture in the early evening light. The huge old sofa, strewn with pillows. The threadbare wing chairs. The massive fireplace mantel, darkened with soot. And on the walls—hanging, leaning everywhere—the photographs. What was so special about them? She didn’t get it. When she had asked her mother, Ruth responded with the small smile she reserved for things she was certain Clara couldn’t yet understand: It’s how a picture makes you feel, deep inside.

  Clara looks slowly at all the pictures: the nude, the picture taken from high up in the sky, the crystalline image of a suburban family on their lawn. What do any of them make her feel? She focuses hard—anything to block out the sounds coming through the wall. Nothing, she decides after a few minutes. There must be something wrong with her. She feels nothing—no, less than nothing. A maw inside of her, a cavernous emptiness.

  The door to the studio opens and Ruth flies out, her face swollen, cheeks wet with tears. She takes a couple of long steps across the room, looking wildly around. She doesn’t even see Clara at first, sitting there on the floor.

  “Get back in here, Ruth. We’re going to finish this.”

  Nathan’s voice, strung tight.

  “I wasn’t doing anything with them,” Ruth shouts. “Why can’t you just accept that?”

  “Because it’s not the point.”

  Nathan emerges from the studio. From Clara’s vantage point she can see his shirttail hanging out from the back of his suit jacket. Ruth wheels around and glares at him. Her mouth is trembling with rage.

  “What is the point, Nate? What made you think you had the right to go through my work?”

  “Because I knew you were lying to me!” Nathan shouts.

  “I had to lie to you! You gave me no choice!”

  “Bullshit, Ruth. You could have stopped. You promised you would stop. We both agreed that—”

  “Please.” The word bubbles up from inside Clara—no more than a whisper.

  “I wasn’t planning to show the work,” Ruth goes on. “Kubovy hasn’t even seen it.”

  “Oh, Kubovy hasn’t seen it,” Nate says. “Well, I guess everything’s fine, then.”

  It is as if Clara is in a terrible magical bubble. She can see and hear her parents, but she is invisible to them. She holds a hand in front of her face, flexing her fingers. Why can’t they see her?

  “Did you ever stop and think, Ruth? Or are you just too fucking selfish to—”

  “Please.” Clara says it a little louder this time.

  They both wheel around and look down at her.

  “Oh, baby,” Ruth says, stricken.

  The two of them—Ruth and Nathan, who in this, at least, are completely, utterly together—crouch down so they’re face-to-face with Clara.

  “We’re sorry, honey, you shouldn’t have—”

  “Please,” Clara repeats. It seems to be the only word she knows.

  “Please what, sweetheart? Talk to us. Tell us—anything.”

  “Please.” She pushes past the lump in her throat. “Don’t fight.”

  IT HAS BEEN so many years since Ruth’s dining room has been used for dining that it has become an extension of her office. The table itself—a Nakashima covered by thick protective pads—is piled with the overflow of magazines and newspapers from the foyer. A stack of recent invitations to gallery openings hasn’t even made it into the studio. It seems that Peony’s responsibilities now revolve solely around Ruth’s book; she has gone from intern to nursemaid to secretary to, now, a kind of glorified personal assistant whom Ruth can’t live—or die—without.

  Clara removes the piles, one by one, and hands them to Jonathan, who stacks them neatly in a corner next to the sideboard.

  “Sammy, can you give me a hand with these?”

  Old coffee-stained issues of Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, and The New York Review of Books, some of them dating back to 1998. Ruth could never bear to part with anything, not even a bunch of magazines. Maybe she really believed that one rainy day she’d sit down and read all these back issues, cover to cover.

  “Why don’t we just throw them out?” Sammy asks.

  Clara stops thumbing through a Harper’s essay about the first Gulf War, suddenly struck by the thought that, yes, she could indeed take these piles and walk them down the hall to the incinerator. She could do this—and Ruth would never know.

  Her stomach lurches, a queasy excitement.

  “You’re absolutely right, Sammy,” she says.

  Jonathan is standing there, a big stack of old pale-pink New York Observers in his arms.

  “Let’s start with those.” Clara eyes them.

  “Are you sure?” Jonathan asks. “We can just—”

  “Oh, I’m sure,” says Clara. Suddenly she feels a high degree of certainty. No, more than that: a near-euphoric clarity. This, at least, she can do. She can purge her mother’s apartment of all that is unnecessary. She can remove every single unessential thing.

  They march out of the dining room—the three Brodeurs—past Peony, who has just come in from some no-doubt urgent errand, carrying her ever-present black portfolio.

  “What are you guys doing?” she asks.

  Clara searches Peony’s tone for an edge, a hint of judgment.

  “Throwing out some of these old papers and stuff,” Clara says. “They were really piling up.”

  “Don’t you think we should…” Peony trails off.

  “What?” Clara asks sharply. There it is—she knew it—that reflexive loyalty to Ruth. Peony, who doesn’t have the slightest idea. Peony, the champion of All Things Ruth. She wasn’t your mother!

  “I mean,” Peony falters, “don’t you think we should use the recycling bags?”

  “Oh,” says Clara. “Right.”

  She shifts the pile of magazines she’s carrying to one hip, then uses her free hand to open the door. The garbage room is only a dozen steps or so down the corridor. Five trips—each of them carrying as many teetering piles as they can handle—and the dining room actually begins to resemble a place where a family might eat dinner.

  Robin, Ed, and the kids show up a little after seven o’clock, carrying two bulging plastic bags full of Chinese food. Harrison and Tucker are still in their tennis whites, fresh from their weekly lesson, and Elliot is wearing her Brearley jumper.

  “Sorry we’re late,” Robin says.

  “You’re not—”

  “General Tsao’s chicken,” says Ed, walking with the bags into the kitchen. “Sesame noodles, crispy orange beef, and that stuff with the pancakes, what do you call it?”

  “Ed.” Jonathan shakes Ed’s hand. “Good to see you.”

  Sammy stands next to Jonathan, her eyes darting from one cousin to the ne
xt to the next. Who are these children and how can they be—how can they possibly be—related to her? Something around the eyes, the shapes of their faces; they look familiar. They have the same grandmother. And they had the same grandfather, though none of them ever knew him. This, at least, they share.

  “Harrison, Tucker, Elliot,” Robin says, “this is your cousin Samantha.”

  One by one, Robin’s kids shake Sammy’s hand as if she’s a bride on a receiving line. Clara’s stomach churns at the formality of their gesture. In another life, these children might have played together every weekend: Frisbee in Central Park, movies on Sunday afternoons. And holidays—all the holidays: Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween. As it is, it’s taken days to arrange this visit. She’s practically had to beg Robin. She wants to meet her cousins. Please, Rob. Whatever’s between us, let’s not infect our children with it. Clara shuts her eyes for a second. She should have reached out before. All these years—there must have been a way, but which she had never found, to give her daughter some piece of her family. And now, here is Sammy, already her own little person, trying to make sense of the fact that there are three of them and one of her. Never has she looked so small and alone.

  Clara is about to swoop in, try to make it better, when the oldest, Tucker, says, “Hey, do you guys want to play Monopoly? I think Grandma has a game in the other room.”

  “Okay.”

  They all troop out, Sammy swept up in the group. She has a look on her face that Clara recognizes. The thinnest veneer of pride. She has cousins now.

  Robin is rummaging through the refrigerator. From behind, in her low-slung jeans and cashmere sweater, she looks like she could be sixteen.

  “So what’s going on with Ruth?” she asks.

  “She woke up once,” Clara says. “She was in a lot of pain. I gave her more morphine.”